The Gray Place
by Marrog
Summary: This fic picks up after the end of Season 3 and explores an AU Season 4 in which the Lexx crashes on an unfamiliar planet. Old wars are rekindled, and following the destruction of Water, Kai may have regained something he lost millennia ago…
1. Chapter 1: Awakening

_A/N: My first fic ever! Please R&R. _

This story takes place after Season 3. Instead of discovering Earth, the crew reenters cryostasis (a la The End of the Universe) and allows the Lexx to drift until he's able to find a planet suitable to his dietary needs. However, this takes longer than anticipated, and a starving, unconscious Lexx crash lands on an unfamiliar world.

Old wars are rekindled, and following the destruction of Water, Kai may have regained something he lost millennia ago…

All of these characters and most of the concepts belong to the creators of Lexx, etc. I'm just manipulating them for my own weird enjoyment and I claim no ownership.

**Chapter One: Awakening **

The interior of the Lexx was desiccated, a dry husk, and the once continuous stream of electrical impulses that governed its biomechanical functions had slowed to nearly nothing. The great insect was dying. It recognized that it had crashed on a planet ripe with decaying organic matter; it could feel the edible loam in which it was half-buried, but it couldn't muster up the energy required to open its mouth and ingest the material. So instead it stagnated, its tiny bug mind processing sluggish thoughts, and it felt neither regret nor sorrow as it waited to pass away.

But then, something inside of its massive echoing depths moved. Something made a very quiet sound.

It was the pneumatic hiss of an opening cryopod.

The cryopod's lid swung open slowly and heavily, resisting centuries of neglected maintenance, but it was a well-built thing and it performed its duty. Its occupant sat up, wreathed in the ensuing cloud of gases, and glanced around, absorbing his surroundings with disinterest. After a moment he stood and walked to the cryopods' control panel, shedding ice as he went.

The cryopod chamber was in disarray. Wires lay tangled across the floor and the living walls had acquired a papery quality due to the Lexx's malnourishment. Kai brushed the last bits of ice off of his arms as he bent to retrieve 790, who had presumably fallen during the crash. After a cursory examination of the robot head, he determined that it was damaged beyond repair; it was silent, its eyeholes empty. Its casing had been ruptured and most of its internal structure was exposed, including its small portion of human brain, which was squashed into a pink, pulpy mass that dribbled out when Kai tilted the head experimentally.

The dead assassin displayed no emotion at the loss of 790. He set it aside and went to check on the status of Xev and Stanley, but before he returned to the control panel he found himself wandering over to the pods instead.

Xev's eyes were closed and her lips were blue. Although it was difficult to see through the fogged glass of the pod, Kai could tell that a thin crust of ice had formed over most of her body, just as it had with him. They had been in cryostasis for a long time – perhaps even longer than they had been before they'd awoken in the orbit of Fire and Water.

He paused, and then touched the glass, his pale fingers coming away wet with condensation. The pods were warming. Apparently his had been the first to unthaw, and therefore had opened automatically; the others should be soon to follow. It immediately occurred to him that the cryo-systems had failed due to the Lexx's critical state, but no concern registered on his face as he stepped away and began to work on the control panel. After several moments he'd received no results: the system was down completely, and he would have to wait for Xev and Stan to wake up on their own.

It could take hours or even days for their pods to reach the appropriate temperature. Kai closed his eyes and didn't even bother to sit down while he prepared to wait, motionlessly and patiently, for his companions to reawaken.

_He stood on the crest of the hill, watching dispassionately as the fiery blaze of the Lexx's weapon grew larger in the sky. He was not alone. Prince was next to him, dressed all in white, his face turned upward._

_"What's that?" Prince asked, his voice quiet and inflectionless._

_"The end of your planet, and of you," Kai replied._

_"I think I should be sad. But I'm not."_

_Kai didn't turn away as he and Prince were engulfed in white light._

Kai's eyebrows furrowed as the memory randomly surfaced. It seemed that something had come afterwards, something he'd forgotten during his long, cold cryosleep. He wasn't troubled by it, not exactly, but in an inexplicable way it commanded his attention. It was like touching the brain of the Divine Predecessor for the first time in the Lexx so long ago and hearing, very faintly, that sound: _yo way yo_…

xxx

Outside the Lexx, the earth heaved and from the displaced ground came a loud, unpleasant squelch. Something was moving. Wet clods of soil began to tumble down as the land seemed to billow and hump upward, forming a hill dozens of meters high, a weirdly organic action. It was not the movement of tectonic plates or built-up gases; it was the migration of an organism from deep below the surface. And then the ground was breached – a white, moist, fat thing emerged, its skin bulging grotesquely. It looked like corpse-flesh, although it was very definitely alive. For a moment it lingered, quivering and exposed, before emitting a bass gurgle and wriggling back down beneath the dirt.

Then the silence returned and all was as it had been before.

xxx

Kai felt the Lexx lurch suddenly beneath his feet. He knew it wasn't a voluntary movement, as the Lexx was too near death to maneuver itself. The disturbance continued for quite some time, but Kai kept his balance, and when the tremors finally stopped he began to make his way to the bridge to see if he could find the source of the problem.

At the time his actions didn't strike him as incongruous, since the dead assassin was not accustomed to self-examination. Once he'd arrived at the bridge, however, he was vaguely puzzled by his uncharacteristic curiosity. _The dead did not have motivation_. But here he was, acting on his own impulses. He narrowed his eyes and pushed the thought from his mind.

The Lexx's viewscreen was dark. This didn't surprise Kai, because it stood to reason that the ship's optic nerves had shut down along with most of its other systems. Trying to patch directly into the nerves wouldn't work, either, not with 790 incapacitated; his only other option was to take a moth outside for a look around.

Yet his brief interest in the disturbance was short-lived. Xev and Stanley weren't in any immediate danger, so there was no reason for him to do anything else. He left the bridge and walked back toward the cryochamber.

xxx

Xev never got used to the feeling of waking up after cryostasis. Maybe it was the cluster lizard in her, the part that thrived in warm temperatures, but she didn't think that human beings were meant to be frozen solid over and over again. For a minute she felt sorry for Kai; after all, this was what his entire life consisted of. Well, _his_ version of life, anyway. But it wasn't as if he particularly cared.

She sat up, fingering bits of ice from her hair. "Kai?" she asked, her voice weak. "Stanley? Seven-ninety?"

It was only then that she glanced around and realized the extent of their problem. Something about the interior of the Lexx looked wrong – the walls looked shriveled, and everything was either broken or showed signs of having been tossed about in a violent collision. Now that she was rapidly returning to full consciousness, she noticed that Kai's cryopod was already open and Stan's was still closed, with him inside it. Kai was nowhere to be seen.

She stepped warily out into the open, skirting around tangles of wire and other bits of shrapnel, gazing at all the damage.

"Seven-ninety!" Xev rushed over to the robot head and almost tripped over the protein regenerator in the process, which was shattered on the ground. She carefully lifted 790 from the rubble and turned him over. A piece of brain dripped onto her wrist.

"Oh, Seven-ninety," she breathed, running her fingers over his face panel.

Even though most of the time she'd spent with 790 recently – a relative term, as she'd been asleep for centuries – had consisted of him calling her The Slut or other variations thereof, she still had feelings for the robot head. Maybe not the type of feelings he would've wished for before he was reprogrammed to love Kai instead, but feelings nonetheless. 790 had been a part of their weird Lexx family. She couldn't quite wrap her mind around the fact that he was gone; he'd been with her from the very beginning, even before she'd met Stanley and Kai, so in a way he really was her oldest friend.

She carried 790 over to the cryopods' control panel and set him down there as she began to press buttons in order to wake up Stanley. Kai had repaired the robot's brain once before; maybe he could again. Somewhere deep inside, though, she realized that her optimism might be futile. The other time, 790's brain had merely been removed, not completely squashed into a pulp as it was now. Plus, the protein regenerator looked beyond saving.

Xev frowned as Stan's cryopod didn't respond to the sequence she'd just typed.

"That won't work."

She looked up to see Kai standing in the doorway, gazing with his own personal variety of moody detachment at her and the control panel. She felt a small leap of joy at the sight of him – and a small leap of something else, too, despite herself. But she pushed that feeling aside. By this point she'd resigned herself to the inevitable fact that Kai was dead and could never love her, even though he seemed to appreciate the unrequited affection she had for him in a roundabout, dead kind of way.

She said his name and hugged him, and kissed him briskly on the cheek while he stared ahead at Stanley's cryopod. "Thank you," he said mechanically. "Most of the Lexx's systems are down. We appear to have crash landed on a planet, although I do not know if it is inhabitable."

"Well, let's find out!" Xev removed herself from Kai and gingerly walked over to Stanley, peering in at him through the glass. "But first let's wake up Stan."

"We might not have to," Kai observed. Stanley seemed to have suddenly awakened by himself, and was now looking back and forth at the two of them and gesturing to be let out. The sound of his voice was reduced to incoherent mumbling by the glass barrier. Xev tapped on the pod and raised her eyebrows at him. She mouthed, slowly: _hold on_. Then she straightened up and looked over her shoulder at Kai, shrugging. "What do we do? I think that one's broken."

"The cryo-systems have failed completely. However…" Kai appeared to briefly evaluate the situation, and then he raised his arm and pointed it at the pod. Xev recognized his gesture and quickly moved aside to stand behind the control panel, where she placed one hand on 790 and glanced alternatively between Kai and Stan. Kai fired his brace at the pod and its lid popped off neatly, landing with a very audible crunch on the floor, while Stan winced and gave Kai a reproachful stare.

"Gee, thanks, although you coulda _killed me_," Stan complained as he exited the cryopod and circumnavigated its smashed lid. "Woah, what happened here?"

Much like Xev had done at first, Stan was absorbing the sight of all the damage. He took his hat off, smoothed his hair, and put his hat back on. While Xev explained everything to him – at least, the small portion of everything that she'd figured out so far – Kai wandered over to the corner of the room. He looked down.

The container that had held his remaining store of protoblood was destroyed. He remembered securing it before he had entered cryostasis, but the crash must have been too severe -- and now his protoblood was pooled viscously around its container's shattered remains, already half-absorbed by the Lexx's porous skin; he remembered…

_The surface of the planet Fire spiderwebbed with red light before it exploded, sending fragments of stone rocketing out into empty space at an immeasurable velocity. Kai's body was instantly vaporized, and it took a moment for his decarbonized cells to reconstitute themselves; by that time he was floating in the vacuum of space with Prince nowhere in sight._

_He knew he wasn't alone, however, for he heard the featureless drone of millions of voices and he saw the spiral of luminous, skeletal forms as they swarmed like hornets upward and away from the wreckage. He recognized them as the souls of the damned, and he watched as several entered the Lexx. One of them did not return._

_Mere seconds later, even after surviving the shockwaves of the explosion, the planet Water destabilized and self-immolated. Kai again observed the release of souls. After the majority of them had passed him by, he noticed that one seemed to be behaving differently; it loitered in the distance, then approached him._

_Kai stared at his soul. His soul stared back._

_It moved forward until it touched him, and afterwards it disappeared._


	2. Chapter 2: Ground Zero

_A/N: I have to apologize in advance for the lack of action in the last chapter and this one, and I promise that things will be picking up soon. The chapter lengths will also increase as the action gets started. The rating is at T for now, but the way things are heading the story may get a bit more graphic in terms of violence and stuff in the future, so it may go up to M at some point. Thanks for reading and please, please give me some comments/criticism!_

_Lexx not mine, etcetera. _

**Chapter Two: A Discovery**

Xev heard a thud and the sound of crushed glass squealing across the floor, and when she turned around she was met with the sight of Kai sprawled out on his back, his eyes closed and his pale hands limp. He bore an expression of puzzled distress on his face. This phenomenon unsettled Xev when it occasionally surfaced; it seemed to be indicative of real emotion, even though she knew that it truly wasn't. But it plucked a chord somewhere in the region of her stomach nonetheless, and she put down 790 to scramble over to the dead man.

"Kai?" she asked, grasping him by the shoulders and giving him a gentle shake. "Kai, are you all right? Stan, I don't think this is a protoblood failure, he was fine when we all went into cryostasis." She heaved him up into a partial sitting position and his head lolled over onto her chest.

"Speaking of protoblood," Stan said, "I think we have a big problem." He'd come up behind the two and was now staring down at the remains of the protoblood, which Xev had missed in the general confusion. She craned her neck to see over Kai's bun, and when she realized the extent of the spill she produced a cluster lizard shriek of frustration and tried to maneuver the dead man away from it.

Once Stan had bent down and helped her drag Kai to the wall and lean him against it -- where he promptly slid over until he rested awkwardly against one of the partitions – she set to work trying to collect the remaining protoblood in her cupped hands. After a moment she sat up and stared dejectedly at Stan. The artificial substance leaked through her fingers as she cast about for something in which she could deposit it.

"Here, Xev," Stan said quietly, removing his hat and holding it out to her.

Xev looked at the hat and scoffed. It was a conflicted noise, an amalgam of disbelief and grudging affection. Stanley was stuck in a state of perpetual adolescence; most of the time he only looked out for his own interests, and could be alarmingly superficial, but then sometimes he displayed such simple and childlike selflessness that she couldn't help but revise her opinion of the man. She knew how much that hat meant to him.

In fact, she seemed to remember a time in which he'd lost his hat and when she'd attempted to give it back to him, he mistook the gesture for a sexual proposition… and then he'd tried to kill her, and a mind-controlling spider had crawled out of his mouth.

Feeling suddenly less sympathetic toward Stan, she said, "No, the protoblood would just soak through. We need to find a real container."

"Yeah, you're probably right." Stan looked slightly put out as he began to pick through the rubble, searching for something more useful. Xev frowned at his jumpsuit-clad posterior as he bent over to pick something up. If they were really stranded, that meant that Stan possibly _was_ the last man in the universe, at least for all functional purposes. It was a hypothetical situation they'd gone over many times, and one that she particularly dreaded. Having sex with Stan, she imagined, would be rather like bonking a hairless yet very excitable monkey.

"Hey, I think this might work!" In trying to avoid the spectacle of Stan's jumpsuit, Xev's eyes had fallen on a bit of the broken cryopod lid that had come loose when it'd hit the ground. She held it up. It was from the bottom portion of the lid that curved around to make a vague bowl shape, and although it was lopsided, it would hold the protoblood efficiently until they were able to find a better storage unit. She began to hastily scoop the gelatinous substance into its new makeshift container.

While she wrung the last of the protoblood from her fingers, which clung with a wet sort of tenaciousness to her smooth, bronze skin, she watched as Stanley tried to communicate with their ship.

"Lexx? _Lexx_?" he asked, and his tone became increasingly impatient each time he received no answer. "Lexx, can you hear me? This is Stan, your_ captain_."

"I suggest you go to the bridge, Stanley," said a low, harsh voice from the corner. Xev and Stan whirled around to see Kai struggling to sit up, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration. "That is where your connection with the Lexx is strongest. In its weakened state, it may only be able to hear you if you are close to its nerve cluster."

Then he collapsed with a muffled groan back against the wall, losing whatever progress he'd managed to make. Xev pulled his arm over her shoulders and helped to lever him upright until he stood unsteadily, leaning against her. "What's wrong with you, Kai?" Xev asked, her lips pouted in concern. "You're not out of alignment again, are you?"

Kai looked over at her dispassionately. "I do not know. I had a strange dream."

"I thought that the dead didn't dream," Stan hazarded, watching Kai with suspicion.

"No, they do not." Kai then made a rather odd face and turned his head to the side. "They do not… usually." His deep voice rasped on the last word, which Xev recognized as the manifestation of Kai's weariness – or whatever he had as an equivalent. She shot a sidelong glance at Stanley; they would deal with whatever was bothering Kai as soon as they'd figured out more pressing matters, such as whether or not they were going to survive the next few days.

xxx

The Lexx was visible for a very great distance on the planet. It was especially noticeable from one vantage point: a mountain, the only distinct feature that the entire moldering, gray-green globe possessed. It was a jagged spike of stone that rose like the fossilized remains of an ancient beast from the soft earth. And, with many eyes, it watched.

At night its sheer façade glimmered with lights, although they were muted and quickly withdrawn, as if hesitant to present themselves as targets. They were elusive. When the wind was right on a good evening, the sound of whispering accompanied them – but the susurrus of murmurs did not reach far, and there was no one to notice it. Until now.

Slowly, the mountain turned its covetous stare to the Lexx.

xxx

The disembodied handprint made its customary staccato whimper as Stan pressed down on it. Xev found herself appreciating the familiarity of the sound; it was a nice thing to hear after everything that had been going on, and at least it was a sign that the Lexx was still alive.

"Lexx, can you hear me?" Stan asked, raising his voice to nearly a shout.

A long pause ensued. Then the dark viewscreen flickered, and a white line threaded sluggishly across it. Finally, the Lexx answered; its voice had gone down several octaves, and it spoke slowly, as if its words were made of syrup, but it still retained its vacantly pleasant demeanor. "I am very hungry, Stan. I have not eaten in a very long time."

Stanley and Xev exchanged looks of profound relief.

"Ask him if anything on this planet is edible," Xev suggested, divesting herself of Kai, who seemed to be able to stand adequately now that he'd had some time to recover.

He swayed a bit in place and put out a hand to steady himself against the Lexx's neural cluster, but otherwise managed not to fall over again. After glancing briefly at Xev beneath furrowed eyebrows, he sent a steadier gaze toward Stanley, and said, "If the Lexx could have eaten, it likely would have already."

It wasn't without precedent for the Lexx to override Stanley's control and go searching for food by itself. In the Lexx's current state of deterioration, it was actually surprising that the large insect hadn't done so already – especially since its entire crew had been in cryostasis, and during that time it was basically operating on the express command to find itself a planet suitable for eating.

Stanley shrugged; it couldn't hurt to ask. "Lexx, you heard her. Is there anything you can eat here?"

"Yes… looks very, very tasty, but…" The ship's tone fluctuated. It went alarmingly high and then plummeted again, its voice eventually dropping so low that it seemed to fall off the register. "But I am very hungry…"

Stan heaved a sigh of exasperation and Kai looked at him again. "I believe that the Lexx is too weak to eat," the assassin said.

"That's a little ironic," Xev murmured, squinting up at the now-blank viewscreen, one hand resting on her hip. "Is the atmosphere outside breathable? It should be, if the planet has things Lexx can eat on it."

"There's only one way to find out," Stanley announced reluctantly, glancing toward the Moth-breeding chamber.

xxx

The original Moths were nothing more than shriveled husks. After their last experience with prolonged cryostasis, Xev and Stanley weren't surprised by this and watched with interest while Kai activated the Moth breeders and gave them instructions.

"Build more Moths," they said in unison, walking stiffly toward the dormant egg sacs.

Xev studied them, and found herself wondering how they managed to stay alive within their membranes for so many years at a time; maybe they were more machine than they were human? That possibility seemed likely to Xev, who remembered trying to comfort one while it died of heat exhaustion back on the planet Fire. It hadn't responded to her presence, and its last words had been, predictably, "build more Moths." Its death had aroused an inexplicable feeling of regret in her at the time, and even the memory of it brought back a faint twinge. After all, they were both victims of the Cluster; they'd both been altered irreversibly by the corrupt system.

She shook her head. Now was not the time to start getting sentimental. "Kai," she said softly, coming up beside him. He'd been standing and watching the Moth breeders impassively, and now he turned to look at her, waiting for her to continue.

"Whatever happened to you earlier," she resumed, "in the cryochamber. Do you think it could happen again?"

Kai tilted his head down and to the side as he thought about her question. "I do not know."

Xev frowned distractedly; that wasn't the answer she'd been hoping for. "What if something happens to us on the planet? It might not be safe out there."

"I will try to protect you and Stanley, as always," he replied. "However, it might be in your best interest to keep these expeditions as brief as possible, at least until I am able to discover the source of my malfunction."

"Hey, guys!" Stan called to them from across the chamber. The Moth breeders were just now affixing the bubble shields to the Moth's eyeholes, which meant that they were close to being finished. Kai began to make his way over, and after pausing for a moment and watching him go, Xev followed.

The Moth chirped agreeably as they took off several minutes later. Xev was driving, her fingers clasped around the fleshy joystick. Luckily the Lexx still had enough energy to open its portals for them as they flew, and the Moth trilled and bobbed forth with absolutely none of the reservations that Xev and Stan were feeling. When the last barrier contracted out of the way, Stan pulled a face and Xev frowned, directing the Moth lower so they could get a better look at the ground.

"Ugh," Stan observed. "It looks like it's all dead."

Xev privately had to agree, although the alien landscape had a certain sort of melancholy appeal. "Let's land and take a look around," she said, briefly catching Kai's gaze. He had no method of predicting if he'd have another blackout while they were down on the surface.

The Moth chirruped as it alit on the soft soil, and Xev and Kai hopped out first, followed more unenthusiastically by Stanley. "I don't suppose there are any _people_ on this planet," he said tetchily, pulling up his pants legs as his shoes immediately sank halfway into the damp ground.

Xev was too busy absorbing their surroundings to notice Stan's complaints. They'd landed right in the middle of a great decaying forest – or at least what was left of it. The planet's floor was coated with fallen leaves, the sort that looked as if they were left over from last autumn; they were already pulpy and moldering, and grown over with patches of moss. She reached out to brush her hand across the trunk of one of the trees, which was bare-branched and thicker around than several Moths put together. Its bark sloughed off beneath her touch, thoroughly rotten.

"This doesn't seem like such a great place," she admitted, glancing around as she was seized with the sudden feeling that she was being watched. Kai too seemed to be on the alert; he stood with one hand resting on the forearm that contained his brace.

"Tell me about it," Stan agreed, oblivious to their wariness as he slogged over to them through the deep loam. "What's that over there?"

Xev followed his gaze and it took her a moment to understand what he was talking about. "The ground…"

"Yes," Kai said emotionlessly, but with a certain note of urgency nonetheless. "It has been disturbed."

For a moment all three were silent, staring at the earth. A patch dozens of meters wide seemed to have recently undergone a violent process; the soil was turned over and the moss was uprooted, and several trees clung crookedly to the tousled dirt as if they were about to topple over any minute. The effect was very localized, and nothing else around the enormous space showed signs of disorder.

"Primitive agriculture?" Stanley suggested, seeming to think that Kai's observation had been a little bit too creepily ambiguous for his taste.

"Before you and Xev awoke from cryostasis," Kai told him, "I felt the Lexx undergo a series of tremors, as if the planet was experiencing an earthquake. I believe this is related."

"That definitely wasn't an earthquake," Xev said, sashaying bravely over to the site of the disturbance. She squatted down and poked at the soil, and then lifted a piece of it and sniffed it.

"It seems to be the work of a… creature." The assassin stepped forward to stand by Xev's side. "Or the result of some kind of underground phenomenon."

"That'd have to be a pretty big creature, wouldn't it," Stan opined from several feet behind the two, glancing around nervously. "Um, Xev? Look at your hand."

She'd noticed it at the same time as Stan, and she lifted up her hand to get a better look. It was covered with a slick, mucus-like substance that had leaked from the soil she was examining. Far from being disgusted, she seemed interested; in fact, the material looked a lot like…

She ran one finger over Kai's lips. He paused, and then tasted the substance while Stan looked stunned and rather horrified. Kai closed his eyes for a moment. "Protoblood," he grunted in confirmation, before opening his eyes again.

All of them took a moment to reflect on what this meant.


	3. Chapter 3: The Collar

_A/N: Wow, three reviews! I have to admit that my interest in this story was waning until you guys showed up and gave me my second wind. Thanks for R&Ring!_

_I apologize in advance for the short length of this chapter. It was originally longer, but I cut off some of it (which will become the beginning of chapter 4) to find a better stopping point. The action's starting to pick up now, and I hope you all enjoy. (:_

_Disclaimer:_ _Lexx belongs to the lovely people of Salter Street Films, etc etc etc not mine etc_

**Chapter Three: The Collar**

"I thought they were all dead," Xev said, cautiously stepping back from the site of the disturbed ground as if she expected a very large, angry Insect to erupt from it at any moment. Her feelings were rather conflicted; another part of her wanted to run back over and collect as much protoblood as she could. But luckily this desire was overridden by her persistent survival instincts, which were currently telling her to get. Away. Now.

"We are in the Dark Universe," Kai answered. He put an almost imperceptible emphasis on the word _are_. "It is possible that a small remnant of the Insect Civilization still exists on this planet."

"That's just great news." Having traveled more than halfway back to the Moth, Stan now stood with his arms folded defensively across his chest, an effect that was somewhat ruined by the way he nervously cradled his hands in his armpits. "Can't we go back and talk about it in the Lexx?"

"That would be a wise option," Kai agreed. His words did little to reassure Xev and Stan, and neither did the way he continued to gaze fixedly at the roiled dirt.

The silence persisted for several more seconds before Stan announced, "Right, then," and proceeded to climb back into the Moth's eyehole. This maneuver was interrupted, however, as he shouted and leapt back out, displaying a sudden sort of distressed alacrity.

"What is it?" Xev asked with interest, advancing toward the Moth to get a better look. She eyed the creature that had startled Stan as it sat up erectly in the cabin. It was small and slender with a long, thin tail and was covered in attractive golden fur with black spots. It stared back at her with unsettling lambent eyes, and pupils that were nothing more than narrow vertical slits.

"A domestic feline." Kai walked up beside Xev, glanced at her, and then expressionlessly looked off somewhere to the side.

"And what's a domestic feline?"

"As far as I can deduce from the memories of the Divine Predecessor, it is a type of parasitic mammal. It invades the homes of weak humans, particularly elderly females."

"It sounds kind of dangerous," Stanley observed, keeping a safe distance.

"I don't know, maybe we can learn something from it," Xev countered. She looked to Kai.

Kai merely gave one of his noncommittal head tilts, which seemed to be his substitute for a shrug, before advancing toward the Moth and picking up the feline. It hissed and struggled, but then settled down to a baleful glower once it realized that the dead man was unresponsive to its claws. He climbed carefully in through the Moth's eyehole, cradling his small burden, and was followed by Xev, while Stan clambered in more tentatively.

As the Moth whirred up into the air, the ground behind it trembled.

xxx

"This was a bad idea."

"Be quiet, Stan! Kai, will you help me get it out?"

"It appears to be enjoying its current location."

Xev sighed. Sometimes Kai's neutrality could be maddening. She gave up trying to extract the errant feline from the Lexx's nerve cluster, where it was stubbornly lodged, cheerfully swiping a many-clawed paw at anyone who came within range. She was starting to agree with Stanley – maybe bringing this creature with them wasn't so clever, after all – but it had been her idea in the first place. She didn't want to admit that she was wrong. As she stepped back from the nerve cluster she sent an exasperated glance at Kai, who was standing several feet away, watching.

"Well, it was wearing something around its neck," she said, trying to salvage the situation. "A collar. That should help us, right? Somebody else must live here." She put the back of her hand up to her mouth and sucked on it; it was riddled with shallow scratches.

Stan looked doubtful from his position on the floor. He was sitting on the step, forsaking his usual stance at the helm due to its proximity to the angry cat. "Yeah, but we don't know anything about them. We haven't seen any people yet and this place doesn't look exactly friendly, does it? What kind of people would live alongside Insects, or even survive on the same planet with them? Not anyone _I'd_ want to meet."

"They must be absolutely terrifying," Xev retorted. "Only complete monsters would keep a furry little animal as a pet."

Stan appeared to decide that it wouldn't be a good idea to argue with her any further, because he remained silent and merely gazed at the loveslave dubiously. The scratches on her hand, coupled with her frustration after attempting unsuccessfully to lever the cat out for the past forty-five minutes, had brought out the cluster lizard in her. The stress and hunger didn't help, either.

Xev sighed again and put her hands on her hips. It was only then that she realized how little Kai had spoken recently, and she turned to look at him. He was gazing expressionlessly at her, and continued to do so, unperturbed by the fact that she had noticed.

"What?" she asked, disgruntled.

"The Lexx is currently incapable of producing food. It may be in your best interest to seek these people out, even if they are… unfriendly. In any event, you and Stanley will die without sustenance."

The way Kai spoke as if he didn't factor into the equation always bothered Xev. She suspected, uncomfortably, that if she and Stan ended up dying on this planet, Kai would remain completely unaffected. He seemed to read the expression on her face and reminded her, "The dead do not eat. I will, however, accompany you and Stanley if you wish to leave."

"See, Stan? We don't really have a choice."

The captain stood and sighed, glancing at Kai, acknowledging the dead man's point with reluctance. "And how do you propose we find these people?"

xxx

"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Stanley asked anxiously, slogging along behind his two companions with a certain pitiful lack of athleticism. His red jumpsuit was stained up to the knees with mud.

Flat gray clouds had descended while they'd been in the Lexx, and a light drizzle was beginning to fall; dank mist was rising up from the forest loam, ghostly and bluish in the growing darkness. The silence was heavy and discouraged speech. Xev almost jumped when Stan's words violated the seemingly impenetrable quiet, and she turned to look at him. She had been watching Kai.

"Yes," the assassin replied, without inflection. The black fabric of his clothing glittered with moisture. Several minutes ago he'd released the cat, and watched intently as it streaked off and disappeared; now he was still following its trail, although Xev could detect no hint of one. Kai's mind was incomprehensible to her. Somehow he knew what he was doing, and she had to accept that; to trust that.

The image of the feline's collar still nagged at her thoughts. It had been apparently carved from a solid chunk of semi-translucent green stone, with strange symbols, like pictographs, neatly tracing its circumference. She knew what they represented. They'd had legs, too many legs.

She hoped that the cat was not leading them to its keepers, as it was intended to do.

"Xev, Stanley. Stop." Kai spoke so suddenly that Xev didn't even have time to register his words before he shot out a hand and pushed her backward. Stan, too, was tripping in the opposite direction, and the ground was all wrong, it shouldn't have been _above_ them…

And then the earth was falling away, revealing a horrible, segmented creature, its carapace quivering in the open air like a putrescent fungus. She could see her scream reflected in its multi-faceted eyes. And she could hear the sound it made, a moist, chitinous clicking, as it turned its attention slowly toward her. Something viscous oozed from its mandibles. If she'd had more time for reflection, she would have realized that each of those fanglike appendages was longer than her forearm.

It screeched as its side erupted in green slime and it redirected its malice toward Kai instead. He stood impassively, holding his brace between his fingers; ignoring the way the Insect's blood dribbled down from the instrument and onto his hand. The Insect paused, its flesh undergoing small upheavals of pain, before it rippled furiously across the ground in his direction.

Kai raised his arm. Xev lifted herself up on one elbow, watching as the gargantuan creature, so immense and ponderous as to seem to be moving in slow motion, reared over the assassin. He took aim and fired his brace once more, but Xev saw nothing more after that as the Insect descended upon him. It was unable to cease its momentum and it crashed and skidded and took down several rotting trees as it fell.

It lay there, burbling and twitching, dying. Saliva frothed from its gaping mouth. She stared, transfixed, and it took her a moment to notice that Stan was standing above her, offering his hand.

"Are you okay?" he asked, concerned, as he helped pull her back upright. A nod was all that she could manage; Kai was nowhere in sight.

But then she saw him, clawing his way out from under the Insect's corpse, so unaffected by the situation that an onlooker would think he'd just finished a perfectly normal, albeit somewhat messy, task. He staggered upright, and almost fell. Xev was briefly concerned before she heard the grisly sound of his bones realigning; the weight of the Insect must have pulverized Kai's internal structure. He paused while his body repaired itself, then sauntered back toward them, not even glancing over his shoulder at the still twitching creature.

"Well," Stan said, looking rather shell-shocked, "at least we know for sure, now. Insect civilization. I mean. You know."

Xev put her arm around his shoulder and squeezed gently.

"We should move on quickly," Kai said, brusquely shaking the green blood off of his hands. "The noise may have awoken others."

Stan didn't hesitate to follow Kai's advice, though Xev, admittedly the braver of the two, walked slowly past the gargantuan corpse to get a better look. The evening had become chilly, and its insides steamed and smelled rank. Protoblood smeared the earth around it like mucus. Suddenly feeling too cold, she jogged to catch up with Stan and Kai.

It wasn't long before the forest began to change. The diseased, decomposing trees gradually segued into healthier specimens, their leaves at the cusp of autumn. The ground became firmer, clothed in vibrant moss. The mushrooms protruding from the trunks of trees were saturated with color; beautiful, poisonous red and oranges, their succulent caps tender with life. Everything seemed to be more alive here and growing ever more increasingly so, as if the forest was dying from the outside in and its core still clung tenaciously to being.

Even though the last of the daylight was seeping from the gray horizon, Xev was beginning to feel more optimistic. Perhaps this planet had some good in it, too; although she'd still prefer not to live here, being stranded was no longer the horrifying prospect that it once had been. She even ventured to hope that the Insects might not come this far into the forest, preferring to choose the decomposing outskirts as their sole domain.

She paused, smiling, as she felt Kai's hand on her shoulder, and she turned to look at him. Her smile faded.

"What's wrong with him?" Stan asked, understandably alarmed. The assassin looked disoriented. Only then did Xev realize that his hand was trembling.

"Kai?" she pressed, her voice urgent, as he abruptly crumpled against her; his decarbonized body was too heavy, and with an effort she helped lower him to the ground.

"Xev. Stan. I must be out of alignment. I do not understand… I need…" he struggled for a moment, then stilled, lapsing into unconsciousness.

For a moment everything was silent. Xev and Stan stared at his motionless body, and then slowly turned to exchange a look of mutual dread. Xev's concern for Kai was eclipsed only by the gravity of their current situation; without him, they were essentially helpless. They were alone on a dangerous planet.

"Kai, please wake up," Stan said, helplessly.

"What's that?" Xev stood, slipping her arm out from under Kai's shoulders. A sound that she'd at first tentatively identified as the sighing of wind in the leaves was growing louder, stranger.

"The trees," Stan murmured. "Look at the trees."

Xev wasn't sure she wanted to. She lifted her eyes as if they were lead weights to see what was watching them from the darkness amongst the branches. Then she abruptly felt a sharp stinging sensation in her neck, and before she could raise her hand to feel what it was, the ground plummeted toward her and the world went black.

xxx

Everything blurred and melted together like mercury: clouds shifting too quickly across the night sky, forming fantastic shapes and then scattering again; bare branches, a black latticework of them, clawing toward each other, hungry; a stone, a single mountain, thrusting upward from the forest like a bleak, petrified deity. It had eyes, thousands of them, and they were in the form of glittering fire. Xev could take no more and she lapsed back into unconsciousness, her drugged mind hearing echoes of the wind in the trees.


End file.
